Nightline Goes Inside Foxconn To Show How Apple Products Are Made

Since Apple announced last week that the Fair Labor Association, an outside monitoring group, would audit most of the Chinese factories where Apple products are made, pressure from markets, the media, concerned consumers, and labor rights activists have driven changes at Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology, one of the world’s largest electronics makers.

On Friday Foxconn said in an emailed statement that it would hike salaries for most of its 1.2 million workers, Bloomberg reported. The basic pay for a junior employee in Shenzhen, the site of one of Foxconn’s four factories, is rising to about $290 a month or $1.80 an hour, before overtime. Salaries for more senior workers will rise to as much as $400 a month, according to The New York Times. The company also said it will cut back on overtime, which for many workers has stretched to 14 hours a day, six and seven days a week.

Meantime, the head of the non-profit Fair Labor Association, Auret van Heerden, was quoted as saying that he had found “tons of issues” inside the Shenzhen plant, which employs some 450,000 workers.

Now ABC News is broadcasting the first-ever video footage from inside Foxconn’s Shenzhen factory. Already ABC has posted some video on its website. Tonight’s edition of Nightline will have a special report on the factory. Given all the coverage of harsh working conditions, it’s fascinating to get a glimpse inside the factory. ABC correspondent Bill Weir reports that a robotic female voice speaks to workers assembling iPhones and iPads, telling them “okay” each time a worker inserts a chip, plugs in a diagnostic cable or wipes a screen. Otherwise employees toil in silence under fluorescent lights, with occasional commands from supervisors in Mandarin.

The video shows one area of the factory that’s completely operated by robots. In other sections workers, clothed in bunny suits and latex gloves, perform repetitive tasks, some using tweezers to insert parts. Weir also goes inside the compact Foxconn dormitory rooms, where eight workers share a small space crammed with bunk beds.

ABC has also posted photos on its site, which are revealing, given all the controversy. It’s been reported that Foxconn workers are as young as 12 years old. It's tough to pinpoint ages in the photos, but many of the Foxconn employees look like teenagers.

One of the most arresting photos shows an enormous crowd of some 3,000 would-be workers, waiting outside Foxconn’s gates on a Monday morning. Foxconn has said that its starting wages are higher than the minimum wage set by local governments.